Mark Fox says YAHOO report the "Tip of the iceberg"
Color Georgia basketball coach Mark Fox not one bit surprised with the revelations released Friday by YAHOO Sports detailing potential NCAA violations involving high-profile players and schools.
“My reaction, it’s probably just the tip of the iceberg, to be honest about it. I’m not surprised, sadly, I really am not,” Fox said before the Bulldogs’ practice Friday afternoon. “I have no idea of what impact it will have on our game. I wish I could say it’s not going to have an impact on our game, but I do not have great confidence that’s going to happen. We’ll see where it goes.”
It certainly could get quite ugly.
According to Friday’s story by Pat Forde, YAHOO Sports viewed hundreds of documents from a meticulous probe where federal authorities kept watch on multiple targets and intercepted- per the article - over 4,000 calls over 330 days.
What was revealed indicated that at least 20 Division I basketball program and more than 25 players were involved.
North Carolina, Duke, Texas, Alabama, Kentucky, Michigan State and USC were among the schools were players potentially received extra benefits and preferential treatment.
NCAA president Mark Emmert released a statement regarding the allegations and stated that changes will be made, although Fox isn’t sure what ultimately can be done.
“I think that ultimately there has be consequences … first of all I think we have to have institutional accountability in intercollegiate athletics and I think obviously the NCAA in this situation would have more information because of the FBI subpoena power that the NCAA doesn’t have,” Fox said. “That’s one of the things that handcuffs the NCAA most of the time, because most of the times they can’t get information.”
Georgia was not named in the report, although three of the players mentioned – Alabama’s Collin Sexton, Duke’s Wendell Carter and former Virginia standout Malcolm Brogdon – were recruited and offered by Georgia and given as examples of players who received benefits.
Fox said the situations described in the YAHOO article were examples of what he and his staff have battled while at UGA.
“There’s no question,” said Fox, who was then asked if there were player the Bulldogs might otherwise have gotten.
“There’s no question that had some impact on certain recruiting situations,” he said.
Fox declined to comment on any of the players named in the story.
“I don’t want to talk about other … I don’t want to bring up other places and other kids, but obviously it’s a frustrating situation,” Fox said. “… at the end of the day, those things happen and it would frustrate anybody, I think.
That’s especially true for Georgia and Fox, who is concluding his ninth year as the Bulldogs’ head coach, and is under intense pressure as his team (15-12, 6-9 in the SEC) likely needs to sweep their final three regular-season games to have any hope of reaching the NCAAs.
The Bulldogs host LSU Saturday at 2.
“We’ve always tried to make sure that Georgia would never be in that situation,” he said. “We believe in trying to do things right and your attempt is to do that everyday in hopes of being an example to the young people you are trying to develop, but also to protect your institution and that’s all we can worry about, doing things the best that we can the way we know how to do it.”
That’s always been his way.
“The goal is to find the guys that can help you win games. Your hopes is you can find guys to do that the right way,” Fox said. “I don’t think we made a decision nine years ago, we’ve always tried to be that way. I have my entire career, so it’s not like we made any choice to change. We’ve always tried to be that way."